REFRACTIONS (2022 - 2024)
While a myth is an algorithm that functions as a tool respective to a time and place, recursively, an algorithm too can become a myth, connected to, and lost with, its iterative updates and procedural contexts.
Refractions is a research project initiated during my residency at NeMe in Cyprus in 2022. It has since expanded iteratively.
A century after Walter Benjamin’s Angel of History’s first appearance, image processing technologies have evolved dramatically. The Angel traverses a landscape littered with piles of obsolete technologies, where trade-offs stifle progress and standard settings obscure clarity. Caught in ripples of distortion and impaired by blind spots, she finds it more and more impossible to render the world around her.
When the Angel learns about Wodan, the Cyclops god who sacrificed an eye for the sense of future vision, her interest is piqued. Fascinated by the lore of future failure,a perspective diametrically opposed to her fixation on past collapse, the Angel enters “Wodan’s Grove,” hoping to learn more.
But as soon as she steps inside, she is caught in a recursive double blind between future collapse and past obsolescence. Everything around her turns to ruins.
With no sense of direction—up or down, forward or backward—the Angel is suspended, unaware that she has tumbled into the abyss of her own Myopia.
Realizing that her environment is synthesized by procedural algorithms for which she is neither the intended user nor a possible interlocutor, she loses all confidence in resolving the data herself.
Momentary panic sets in.
If her tools cannot render this data, perhaps another framework might recalibrate the glitch. In a effort, she scans frequencies she usually keeps muted. Deep within a C-band frequency, she detects a faint echo: a CyCLOPS.cy corner reflector, part of a decentralized AI system that recalibrates data misaligned across time and space.
Finally, she resolves her phase difference and her perspective becomes clear.
Iterations
The project’s development involved collaborations and iterations across multiple locations and formats:
2022: Refractions in Light and Time, 3D environment installation with custom wallpaper, shown at NeMe, RIXC, WRO (Cyprus, Latvia, Poland).
2023: Refractions in Light and Time lecture performance at RMIT, Melbourne.
2023: Cyclops Retina, in collaboration with Kimchi and Chips, London.
2024: Refractions video installation with soundtrack by Debit and custom sigils, exhibited in Schafhof, Munich, Germany, and iMAL, Brussels, Belgium.
The residency at NeMe made this exploration possible, allowing Menkman to work with Taietzel Ticalos, Marios Isaakidis, and Irini Mirena Papadimitriou. Soundtrack by Debit. In dialogue with NeMe
Refractions is a research project initiated during my residency at NeMe in Cyprus in 2022. It has since expanded iteratively.
A century after Walter Benjamin’s Angel of History’s first appearance, image processing technologies have evolved dramatically. The Angel traverses a landscape littered with piles of obsolete technologies, where trade-offs stifle progress and standard settings obscure clarity. Caught in ripples of distortion and impaired by blind spots, she finds it more and more impossible to render the world around her.
When the Angel learns about Wodan, the Cyclops god who sacrificed an eye for the sense of future vision, her interest is piqued. Fascinated by the lore of future failure,a perspective diametrically opposed to her fixation on past collapse, the Angel enters “Wodan’s Grove,” hoping to learn more.
But as soon as she steps inside, she is caught in a recursive double blind between future collapse and past obsolescence. Everything around her turns to ruins.
With no sense of direction—up or down, forward or backward—the Angel is suspended, unaware that she has tumbled into the abyss of her own Myopia.
Realizing that her environment is synthesized by procedural algorithms for which she is neither the intended user nor a possible interlocutor, she loses all confidence in resolving the data herself.
Momentary panic sets in.
If her tools cannot render this data, perhaps another framework might recalibrate the glitch. In a effort, she scans frequencies she usually keeps muted. Deep within a C-band frequency, she detects a faint echo: a CyCLOPS.cy corner reflector, part of a decentralized AI system that recalibrates data misaligned across time and space.
Finally, she resolves her phase difference and her perspective becomes clear.
Iterations
The project’s development involved collaborations and iterations across multiple locations and formats:
2022: Refractions in Light and Time, 3D environment installation with custom wallpaper, shown at NeMe, RIXC, WRO (Cyprus, Latvia, Poland).
2023: Refractions in Light and Time lecture performance at RMIT, Melbourne.
2023: Cyclops Retina, in collaboration with Kimchi and Chips, London.
2024: Refractions video installation with soundtrack by Debit and custom sigils, exhibited in Schafhof, Munich, Germany, and iMAL, Brussels, Belgium.
The residency at NeMe made this exploration possible, allowing Menkman to work with Taietzel Ticalos, Marios Isaakidis, and Irini Mirena Papadimitriou. Soundtrack by Debit. In dialogue with NeMe
The Angel of History and her Mission to Learn from Cyclops Vision
Cyclops Retina
In collaboration with Kimchi and Chips.
Commissioned Install for Thin Air @The Beams, on till the 4th of June, London, UK.
In Cyclops Retina, Kimchi and Chips and Rosa Menkman combine their contrasting research into light as both a material and neurological phenomena to create an experimental video essay presented in an experimental format. The specially commissioned narrative written and narrated by Menkman takes us on her journey into the cave of a cyclops so that she might learn how to see into the future. This journey is illustrated by millions of beams of light which are merged in the haze to create floating graphics in the air. The installation and narrative delve into unconventional modes of vision, pushing boundaries and exploring new ways of experiencing light and perception.
Commissioned Install for Thin Air @The Beams, on till the 4th of June, London, UK.
In Cyclops Retina, Kimchi and Chips and Rosa Menkman combine their contrasting research into light as both a material and neurological phenomena to create an experimental video essay presented in an experimental format. The specially commissioned narrative written and narrated by Menkman takes us on her journey into the cave of a cyclops so that she might learn how to see into the future. This journey is illustrated by millions of beams of light which are merged in the haze to create floating graphics in the air. The installation and narrative delve into unconventional modes of vision, pushing boundaries and exploring new ways of experiencing light and perception.
Locations of different lineages and families of cyclopses I traced all over Europe
plaque of the CyCLOPS.cy Strategic Research Infrastructure Unit, an optical infrastructure network in Cyprus supporting the Sentinel satellite 
Documentation of my visit of CyCLOPS.cy in Limassol at the polytechnical University
Locations of the 12 CyCLOPS.cy corner reflector Network
ALEV01 + ALEV02
AKMS01 + AKMS02
SOUN01 + SOUN02
ASGA01 + ASGA02
MATS01 + MATS02
TROU01+ TROU02 - INACCESSIBLE BECAUSE MILITARY ZONE -
GOOGLE SATELLITE SCREENSHOTS
GOOGLE SATELLITE SCREENSHOTS
CyCLOPS.cy Corner Reflector network
optical infrastructure supporting the Sentinel satellite (2024)
12 CyCLOPS.cy Corner Reflectors (2024)
prints Installed at Schafhof, Freising (by Munich, 2024)
optical infrastructure supporting the Sentinel satellite (2024)
12 CyCLOPS.cy Corner Reflectors (2024)
prints Installed at Schafhof, Freising (by Munich, 2024)
Documentation of our first Cyclops research in Serifos, at the Cyclops throne and inside the cyclops cave.
Wodans grove near the village i was born.